Cemetery Tour reservation deadline is June 17

Cemetery Tour reservation deadline is June 17

Jun 6, 2015 | news archive

Jane VanBenschoten Dowie

The Fourth Annual Living History Cemetery Tour, sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM), will take place Saturday, June 20 at the New Kingston Valley Cemetery, Thomson Hollow Rd., New Kingston.

Rain date is June 21. Reservations ($15) are required. Call 586-4736 by June 17 to reserve a specific tour time. Those 15 and under get in free.

The popular event combines history, theater and an authentic taste of Catskill Mountain culture by bringing to life eight men and women who share their stories and hard-won wisdom with tour goers.

Ezra Henderson

Costumed guides will conduct seven tours – one leaves every 20 minutes starting at 4 p.m. — throughout the cemetery to meet these interesting folks from the past. Directors are Joyce St. George and Frank Canavan.

Performers this year include two newcomers to the living history “stage” – Bill Birns of Fleischmanns and John Lehmann of Redkill. Returning players include Roy Moses, Anne Hersh, Fred Margulies, Amy Taylor, Harriet Grossman and John Bernhardt.

Docents are Barbara Atkin, Tina Greene, Cedric Taylor and Fred Travis.

Lincoln Long

Returning to the land of the living for the evening are Lincoln Long, 1861-1927, school superintendent, Methodist minister and NYS Assemblyman; farmer Ezra Henderson, 1838-1925; salesman Andrew Russell, 1852-1933; Harriet Martin Slack, 1842-1928, wife of a Civil War amputee and mother of nine; M. J. Faulkner, 1877-1953, long-time proprietor of the New Kingston general store; sisters Jane Dowie and Mary Swart, descendants of VanBenschoten pioneers; and Charles W. Halleck, 1840-1914, travelling performer, cooper and horse lover.

4th Annual Cemetery Tour coming up

4th Annual Cemetery Tour coming up

May 28, 2015 | news archive

Eight men and women, their voices silenced long ago, will return to tell their stories at the Fourth Annual Living History Cemetery Tour Saturday, June 20 at the New Kingston Valley Cemetery, Thomson Hollow Rd., New Kingston.

Rain date is June 21. Reservations are required by June 18. Group tours begin every 20 minutes starting at 4 p.m.

Tickets will be available beginning this weekend for the popular event, sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM). Those attending HSM’s first program of the season, “Objects and Memory” on May 30 at 3:30 p.m. at 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville will have the first opportunity to sign up for a tour time at a discounted rate — $12.

After May 30, reservations can be made by phone only and will cost $15: 845-586-4736. (Well behaved children under 15 are free.)

The tour combines history, theater and an authentic taste of Catskill Mountain culture. Groups will be guided through the cemetery to meet interesting folks from the past, portrayed by local residents. Previous tours have been held at Margaretville, Clovesville and Sanford Cemeteries.

Objects and Memory at HSM

Objects and Memory at HSM

May 22, 2015 | news archive

A multi-media presentation exploring the way ordinary objects are transformed into irreplaceable carriers of experience, aspiration, and identity will be offered Saturday, May 30 at 3:30 p.m. at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

This free program by filmmaker and historian Jonathan Fein is made possible by a grant from the NYS Council for the Humanities and the NYS Legislature.

Historical objects excite the imagination as they illustrate the past, demonstrating that we are living through history this very day. Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, Fein saw that historians and curators were working as history was unfolding, and he started filming their thoughts and actions. Fein will share excerpts from and material captured in the making of his award-winning documentary, Objects and Memory, and the book he is currently writing about it.

This program is part of Headwaters History Days, two weekends of exhibits, programs, open houses and activities spotlighting local history from Andes to Olive. www.headwatershistorydays.org

The program is sure to stimulate questions about contemporary history, material culture, heirlooms and memory and help attendees approach the question, ‘How do we preserve the past and speak to the future?,’ and to see their world with deeper perspective.
Jonathan Fein has long been interested in the interrelationships of the tangible and the intangible. As a sculptor (University of Pennsylvania MFA ’78), his work has evolved from the manipulation of physical material to sculpting in time: filmmaking.

His filmmaking credits include the award-winning documentary Journeys to Peace and Understanding; the Emmy Award-winning series 4Stories; documentaries The Competition, Death Row Diaries and A Change of Heart; the PBS series The Fred Friendly Seminars; the Broadway musical Nunsense 2; and the Wisdom Channel series Innerviews.

Objects and Memory at HSM

Local History in the Spotlight

May 18, 2015 | news archive

Headwaters History Days, two full weekends of events, exhibits, open houses and activities celebrating the history, culture, folklife and landscape of the Central Catskills, will be held May 30 and 31, and again June 6 and 7.

Visitors are invited to explore 16 historic sites across two counties, through the East Branch and Esopus Watersheds from Andes to Olive.

Museums, landmark structures and historic sites will be open to the public at no charge for one or both days. Docents will be on hand to explain the significance of their sites, and lead walking tours and leisurely rambles. Two lectures will provide food for thought. 

For a map and schedule, visit www.headwatershistorydays.org

View a short video from Headwaters History Days 2014:

Three former stations on the Ulster & Delaware Railroad will be open. The Delaware & Ulster Rail Road will offer regular excursions from its Arkville station base, to the historic Roxbury Depot Museum where the operations of the former “Up & Down” are depicted in photos and models. In Phoenicia, the Empire State Railway Museum will welcome visitors to ‘Phoenicia Junction’ where hundreds of thousands of tourists passed through on their way to hotels and boarding houses deeper into the mountains.

Visitors will learn about the Anti-Rent War of the 1840s at the venerable Hunting Tavern Museum of the Andes Society for History and Culture. At the Olive Free Library in West Shokan, they will learn of the displacement of whole communities when the Esopus was dammed to create the Ashokan Reservoir.

Two distinctive “District #10” schools will be open to visitors – one built of stone during the Civil-War in Dunraven, the other an elaborate two-story affair, constructed in 1925 in Pine Hill, that now serves as Shandaken’s Town Museum.

Climb the stairs of the Roxbury Methodist Church tower to hear (and see) a venerable clock chime the hour. Visit the exquisite church, railroad station and public park built by the Goulds of Roxbury, explained in walking tours May 31 and June 6 at 10 a.m.

Watch a complex network of belts and pulleys power a sawmill in a 150-year-old barn in Kelly Corners and then tour other buildings on the active Hubbell Homestead farm. Tour the oldest structure on the HHD circuit, the 1828 Walter Stratton stone house in Roxbury’s Meeker Hollow, and learn how it evolved over almost two centuries.

The Pakatakan Farmers Market will welcome visitors to the iconic Kelly Brothers Round Barn in Kelly Corners. Get acquainted with naturalist John Burroughs at his Roxbury retreat, Woodchuck Lodge, then enjoy a leisurely guided walk to explore and observe nature as he did on June 6 at 1 p.m.

Find out about Fleischmanns’ hotel heyday, and the family that gave the village its name at the Greater Fleischmanns Museum of Memories and then experience a walking tour of Main Street May 31 at 11 a.m.

Two illustrated talks are highlights of HHD.

A presentation by John Duda at Skene Memorial Library, Fleischmanns will show how the Delaware & Northern Railroad knitted together small communities from Margaretville to East Branch when he discusses “Lost Towns of the Pepacton Reservoir and the Railroad that Served Them” May 31 at 2 p.m.

Discover what all of these sites and their treasures mean to us, as individuals, and as a society, at a multi-media talk, “Objects and Memory,” at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown hall, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville. Filmmaker/historian Jonathan Fein’s appearance on May 30 at 3:30 p.m. is made possible by a grant from the New York Council for the Humanities.

 

From soldier to fish farmer

From soldier to fish farmer

Apr 9, 2015 | Tin Horn

Research into the lives of Middletown’s Civil War veterans has revealed more than a few intriguing and inventive men behind the uniforms.

Alder Lake with farm house, barn and hatchery

One of those was Julius G. Smith. Born in Glen Aubrey, NY May 18, 1840 to George and Achsa Millard Smith, he was also known as Junious, or just plain June Smith. The family evidently migrated to Delaware County (George and Achsa died in the 1850s and are buried in Woodland Cemetery. Delhi).

Twenty-one-year-old June came to Middletown to enlist in Company E of the 3rd NY Cavalry on August 11, 1861. For four years, he saw plenty of action throughout the Carolinas and Virginia, including the siege of Petersburg. His profile in the 1880 Munsell’s History of Delaware County counts 63 combat engagements. He appears to have escaped unharmed, and was discharged in July of 1865.

June was almost 30 when he married Adelaide (Ada) Jackson, daughter of Luther and Martha Jackson of Dingle Hill in the Town of Andes. The couple first lived with her parents, where June worked on the farm before setting up their own household in Dunraven. There were three children, Irving, Chauncey and Millard.

June Smith must have loved to tinker because he invented what became known as the “June Smith Creamer.” Just what it looked like or did is anyone’s guess – perhaps separated the cream from the milk — but It turns up in farm auction notices and in at least one article in the Catskill Mountain News where a 1947 story about a display of old time farm tools at Bussy’s Store in Margaretville described the “June Smith milk cooler, the patented invention of a Margaretville man.”

 

By the mid-1880s, though, June was more interested in fish than cows. Angling historian Ed VanPut writes in The Beaverkill that June Smith had been a fishing guide since he got out of the Army, and in 1889, traded his Dunraven farm for one carved out of the forest in the Town of Hardenburgh by Asahel and William Bryant. There Smith envisioned a resort to attract wealthy anglers who were coming to fish the nearby Beaverkill.

A partnership with fellow Civil War veteran Charles Odell, a wealthy Pittsburgh steel manufacturer, helped June Smith turn the farm’s Aulder Pond into 55-acre Alder Lake, stocked with native brook trout supplemented with those raised at a hatchery built below the dam. Smith was good at propagating trout, too good perhaps.

The partnership between him and Colonel Odell dissolved in 1891, and Alder Lake became the domain of a private club of wealthy Hudson Valley men. Most prominent among them was Samuel Coykendall, a millionaire railroad and steamboat company owner who ultimately purchased the shares of the other owners, built a three story stone mansion in 1900 and enlarged his estate to 1600 acres.

In 1945, the property passed from the Coykendalls to another private club, and then became a Boy Scout Reservation for Nassau County, LI scout troops. Legendary local outdoorsman Niles Fairbairn was the camp caretaker for many years, living in the Coykendall mansion. The property became part of the State Forest Preserve in 1980. The mansion was razed in recent years.

But back to June Smith.

After Alder Lake, he established Orchard Lake Hatchery on a tributary of the Willowemoc Creek in Sullivan County. Owned by tanner Stoddard Hammond, that hatchery too became a private club for a group of New York City sportsmen.

And so June Smith moved on to Liberty, constructing a third hatchery to sell trout to various fishing clubs and landowners. He was well known for pioneering and advancing this Catskill ‘industry,’ assisted by son Chauncey. He entertained anglers and hatchery visitors from far and wide.

In 1902, the Livingston Manor Ensign newspaper seemed prepared to write the trout farmer’s obituary. “June Smith of Liberty was perhaps fatally injured in a runaway near that village yesterday. The team he was driving became frightened and ran away, throwing him out and breaking both legs. The wagon ran over him, injuring him internally.”

But June Smith, survivor of dozens of fierce southern battles in his youth, was made of tougher stuff. He recovered and lived another 20 years. He passed away in the early 1920s in Liberty and was buried in Arena. When the Pepacton Reservoir was built, June and Adelaide Smith were reinterred in the Sanford Cemetery, Dunraven.